Vijay Mallya has been required to pay the State Bank of India and 12 other banks seeking the recovery of debts, £200,000 (₹1.8 crore) by June 5 this year, towards the costs of the legal case being pursued against him, according to court documents here in the U.K. The amount is an initial payment, with possible further costs to be determined. The amount cannot be appealed.
After Mr. Mallya’s attempt to throw out the registration of a ruling by India’s Debt Recovery Tribunal in the U.K., and a worldwide freezing of international assets failed in May, Judge Andrew Henshaw required Mr. Mallya to pay the costs of the World Freezing Order application, as well as his applications to set aside and discharge those orders
Claimants’ costs
In an order from May 10, the Judge at the Business and Property Courts of the Queen’s Bench Commercial court required Mr. Mallya to pay the claimants’ costs in these matters which were subject to “detailed assessment, if not agreed.”
The costs of registering the Bangalore Debt Recovery Tribunal’s January 2017 ruling in the U.K., would also be subject to “detailed assessment, if not agreed’ and added to the DRT judgement, the document said. “The First Defendant is to make a payment to the Claimants in the sum of £200,000 on account of the Claimants’ costs… by 5 June, 2018,” the document read.
“The standard order is that the court will assess those costs unless the parties can otherwise agree a figure for what should be paid,” a legal expert explained. “The court assessment of costs is a separate process, which ends with another court hearing before a specialist costs judge. In the meantime, the court ordered that Dr. Mallya pay £200k towards this costs liability.”
Mr. Mallya is currently seeking permission to appeal the commercial court’s ruling that dismissed his efforts to quash the worldwide freezing order, and the registration of the DRT case in the Court of Appeal. That process is still ongoing.
Apart from extradition
The banks’ case is being pursued independent of India’s efforts to extradite him to India to face charges relating to fraud and money laundering. A final hearing in the case, when both sides will put forward their closing remarks, has been delayed from the middle of July to July 31.
While the extradition efforts focus specifically on an alleged fraud centring around loans provided by IDBI Bank, the debt-recovery and asset freezing efforts are being pursued by 13 banks led by the State Bank of India and include Bank of Baroda, Corporation Bank, Federation Bank, IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd, Punjab and Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Mysore, UCO Bank, United Bank of India and JM Financial Asset Reconstruction.
